Subdomains vs. Subfolders Inheriting Authority/Ranking Value
-
Our website is a continuing education website that is linked to a large university, and our URL is a subdomain of that larger university domain. We offer degrees as well, but because of the modifications we'd like to make to the degree webpages, our content management system won't let them be a part of our website.
Now we're trying to figure out if we should create a separate subdomain for all degrees, and put the individual degrees in separate folders (so, all degrees' URLs woudl be degrees.us.university.edu/degree-name/), or if we should give each its own URL, which would be completely separate from ours (degree urls would be degree-name.university.edu).
So our question is, how well do subdomains carry the value of the domain? Is it better to have twenty websites that are all separate subdomains of a strong domain, or one subdomain in a subdomain that houses all twenty websites in folders?
And, as a side note, will housing the degrees in degrees.us.university.edu pass value to us (us.university.edu)?
Thanks!
-
Hi Kristina - sorry for the long delay!
I definitely wouldn't go with sub.subdomain.rootdomain.edu - I'd go with a subfolder and hopefully, something as close to the root/main domain as possible.
-
Thanks, Rand - I wasn't able to find those articles on my own. They're really helpful.
I think one of the subtleties of our question is, is there a higher chance of gaining value from a strong root domain beause you're only one subdomain away? We're worried that, by creating subdomain.subdomain.root-domain.edu, we're completely losing any chance of value from our root domain.
-
I have a client with subdomains, and they seem to group together nicely, I do plent of closs linking, it helps that the content is relevant accross domains, but one thing I do is locate all the images and some js and css files on the root domain and link to them from the subdomains. now i have no evidence that this makes a diference besides my gut feeling, but i hope that Se's see this as one big site, i would if i was working at Bing or Google
-
I don't think you're gaining much with a complex subdomain play. My recommendation would be to use the usual format: domain.tld/geo/category/degree-name this format will provide clear URLs which are easy to understand by both search engines and users.
-
Hi Kristina - I actually wrote an in-depth post about this and did a whiteboard Friday on the topic:
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-microsite-mistake
Basically, the answer is "sometimes" subdomains will be connected with the root domain and other subdomains in the eyes of the engines, but other times, this isn't the case.
In the specific one you're describing, my guess is that much of the root domain authority and ranking power will pass to the subdomain, so long as there are good links passing between the two (indicating a relationship, rather than a new, separate site).
best,
Rand
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to change images of a page without loosing ranking?
Hi, I have two reasons to change some images of a page on a wordpress site: 1.Google speed service advise me to optmize the images size to better spead load times. 2.I want to change images titles (to improve seo optimization for the page keyword), so i need to replace them, since im using wordpress. Now the question is: Can i just change the images without worring about any related seo issues? Or should i follow some best practice to change images in order to not affect the ranking of the page? tx for your support!
On-Page Optimization | | Dreamrealemedia0 -
Best schema option for condos / condominiums?
Hey guys, I'm doing a review on some schema on some of our sites. Most of them are generic using LocalBusiness. There are a few more specific schemas I could use, but not sure what would be the most relevant. Wondering if any of you have a suggestion or ideas? https://schema.org/Residence https://schema.org/LodgingBusiness https://schema.org/ApartmentComplex or I could just stick with LocalBusiness. I'm leaning towards LodgingBusiness or ApartmentComplex.... but when I think of LodgingBusiness I think of something temporary / vacation type deal like hotels. Apartments... kind of self explanatory, a condominium isn't exactly an apartment but perhaps it is more comparable to an apartment than a hotel, motel or inn. What are you thoughts on this? Also, which "format" is better to use RDFa, microdata, or JSON-LD. Does it matter?
On-Page Optimization | | donnieath0 -
How to analysis Responsive VS Dynamic site?
Hello Experts, Can you please throw your knowledge on How to analysis Responsive VS Dynamic site? Also please suggest best tool to optimize both type of sites plus if I have to optimize manually then what is the best way? It will help lots of people as currently google focusing more on mobile site so we can optimize our responsive and dynamic site. Pls suggest. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | adamjack0 -
How can i get a higher ranking
Hey All, As a rookie on SEO, I optimised this page http://www.nhad.de/fernstudium/sprachkurse/arabisch/sprachkurse-arabisch/arabisch.aspx for the keywords Arabisch lernen. I saw a huge improvement from position 100+ to position 45. but now it's stuck around this position. Are there any things I missed on this page? Are there still things to increase the ranking? I hope to learn from you. thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | NHA_DistanceLearning0 -
Do sites with more pages rank better?
If a site has more pages and also has good internal linking, then logically it would rank better. Is this the case? Should I be building big (but high quality) sites?
On-Page Optimization | | T0BY0 -
Competitor rank
Hi We have been doing SEO on one of our properties for 4 years now. We had a new competitor jump in and is now ranking above us within 6 months. I verified various parameters including link backs/etc. but cannot see as to why Google would rank them above our page despite us following all ethical SEO practices/updating content etc. Do you guys have an experience/thoughts on this? P
On-Page Optimization | | Parvesh0 -
Moving a site from .cfm to Wordpress - How to keep the authority?
Hi guys, My client has a site built with Cold Fusion (web pages end in .cfm) and we're moving them over to Wordpress (for many reasons), keeping the same menu structure and navigation. Their previous SEO company was pretty awful, however, they did manage to establish some decent authority/backlinks for the website and its 20 or so pages. My questions: I assume I'll want to do 301 redirects for each page, possibly by editing the .htaccess file? Any advice on this? Anything else I need to consider in this move? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | alpen0 -
Multiple silos/products/landing pages. How to design the root page for conversion?
Hi everyone, First post. Tried a few awkward searches on the topic but I must be using bad keywords. I'm re-designing a site that has multiple products and matching multiple audiences. This means we have multiple sillos for multiple groups of keywords with the supporting pages for each silo landing page. Currently I'm working on updating the look and text of those landing pages for each silo to increase conversion. This leaves me with the root web page. We get quite a lot of search traffic from people searching our brand name - so this results in clicks straight through to our root domain. There are no product specific landing pages because it could be any one of the 3-5 different personas we have hitting the site from that source. Does anyone have any good examples of where a site has had multiple products and needed to segregate their audience on a root top page? I'd like to see some examples and hear peoples thoughts. At the moment I'm thinking I need to fill that page up with trust factors as to why people should use us as a company, along with navigational elements in relation to each and every product so they can click through to the proper landing page. The main way I can see on executing that is to have a rotating banner with the same tag line "this is what we do" but be alternating between banners relating to each product.. with their own click through button to go to the respective landing page. Thoughts anyone? Example of sites doing this well?
On-Page Optimization | | specific0